Portable electronic devices, such as mobile telephones, media players and wearable devices can operate using a battery as a source of power. The battery can have a limited amount of power and lifetime before recharging. Therefore, portable electronic devices can have stringent power consumption requirements to make sure that they are able to power the device for an adequate amount of time, without requiring big and heavy batteries to do so. To conserve batter power, it may be beneficial to reduce the power consumption of applications and reduce computing complexity at certain times, and provide full functionality (and a resultant increase in power consumption) only when necessary.